A Time for Dancing

This film was absolutely fabulous. I am dancer and watching it made me want to dance, and it doesn't just apply to dancers this film i know people that have watched that are not very keen on dancing but they really liked this film. The dancers in it are fabulous and really make the film whole. This storyline is amazing, and very enjoyable. Friendships are put the test love is hanging on a small string. I enjoyed this film more than anything the beauty in the relationships. You see that everyone should live their life to the maximum. Which these girls did. Friendship, devotion, courage, acceptance these are the main messages of the film and they are strong messages that everyone should think about once. This shows these girls are grateful for everything they have and that is the way that everyone should be.

It is so dissapointing that one of the best books I have ever read was adapted into such a bad film that totally lost the plot.

The movie is about Sam & Jules. Sam loves to dance, but Jules lives to dance. Jules is planning on going to Juilliard, and Sam is planning on tagging along, simply because she and Jules have been inseparable since they were six years old. But Jules's dreams come to a grinding halt when she is diagnosed with cancer. Jules & Sam's relationship is put to the test and things will never be the same again.

Shiri Appleby was pretty ordinary and forgettable in this film. But, in her defence, if the movie had been based more closely on the book, her character would have been alot meatier and she probably could have done alot more with herself. Larisa Oleynik could have made her role really great. She could have tugged the audience's heart strings from beginning to end, but she didnt. Once again, in her defence, the film didnt concentrate enough on the emotional side of Jules's cancer, instead they stuffed it with way too many dance routines that just ended up being boring and hogging too much of the screen time. I know this film is about a girl who just wants to dance, but really, they were great steps, dont get me wrong, but too much of a good thing can be bad and boring. They should have concentrated alot more on the emotional and made sure there wasnt a dry eye by the end. Its strange that they didnt give Peter Coyote, a pretty darn good actor by my standards, more screen time. he had only two minor scenes with little dialogue and hardly any room for emotional response. There is one scene in which Jules tells her parents she wants to stop chemo, and he shows signs of potential, but then they leave it at that.

With all due respect, the book was much better.

I liked the cast of the movie, although I would have preferred that Shane West was in more scenes. I'm not quite sure that they explained properly Sam's relationship her mother. Sam definitely had a chip on her shoulder but they never fully explained why. Additionally, I found the dream sequences to be kind of lame. I also would have preferred they showed or at least expressed how long she had been on chemo before she decided on her own to stop doing therapy. It didn't give the audience a frame of reference and due to her parents reaction almost made you feel as if she didn't want to fight for her life. The acting was great though. A decent movie to watch on cable during a rainy weekend afternoon.

I guess this is a prime document of when nu pop-jazz began.

I don't think I've ever seen so many jazz sneakers and hair whipping.

This one is definitely not for the dancers that weren't trained in a Studio. If you studied contemporary or alternative/athletic modern, its gonna be a painful experience.

Not to say the dancers aren't talented and the the performances (given the script..)aren't okay. This just isn't the best way to showcase that talent. I'm sure it would favor better among the So You Think You Can Dance generation of dancers.

If you want a good dancing movie with drama, go for The Turning Point. If you want a modern film that isn't super cheesy. A modern dance film that doesn't have its dancers whipping their hair around wearing unitards and masks. A modern dance film that doesn't use a very early form of Lyrical dance as a segway to the next scene....I don't know what to tell ya...One Last Dance with Patrick Swayze?

I've seen this movie three times now, but only once all the way through. In general, it's a classic tear-jerker but not as much as I would have liked. Having a good cry when watching a movie is a good thing... (unless you're crying because it's horrible) but this didn't give me the sense of emotional drama I was hoping for. To me, it didn't seem like the characters were really showing how much Juliana's Cancer was affecting them. There was only one scene when I felt her parents were really showing us their true feelings in the situation. Sam, I would also have liked to have seen the emotions from a "best friends" point of view, which I don't think was shown that much. This movie was based on dancing, but it could have took a deeper more in-depth look at the sides of Cancer and how it was affecting Jules's family and friends. Something which really caught my interests in this movie though was the music. The music in this movie really conveyed the situations playing in front of us and fitted in perfectly. For me, the music was one of the best parts of this movie.